Wednesday, November 10, 2010

There is no doubt the use of mobile phones is increasing every day and there are now many people who use their phones not only to talk or text but also to check their email or browse the Internet.

Moreover, with products like the iPhone and services like the Apple Store, there are more than 200,000 apps available to provide our phone with a lot of extra functionality. Babbel also wants to lead the use of apps to learn languages and that’s why they have released a free app to learn English using your phone.

This app has more than 3,000 words in total (with vocabulary from the basic to the most advanced levels) so you can improve your level of English at any place. One of the strongest points of this app is its speech recognition functionality that allows you to test and practice your pronunciation.

This new audio feature includes analysis of pronunciation in real time and evaluates all facets of speech. The technology works as follows: When a learner repeats a word or a phrase, an algorithm compares his or her pronunciation to that of a native speaker, and immediately gives an evaluation of the similarity on a scale of 0-100. If the pronunciation scores over 50, that means it is generally understandable. At the learner’s discretion, the pronunciation can then be repeated to perfection.

By the way, this app to learn English is also available for other products of the Apple family like the iPod Touch or iPad. Hence, it is not critical to have an iPhone in order to enjoy it.